The decision reflects the short-term challenges of marketing a team with a 9-23 record over the past two seasons, one at risk of posting three consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 1963.

More important to owners Zygi and Mark Wilf, the move most likely assures their team will be on television all season as it prepares to sell premium seating at a new stadium to be built with $500 million in public subsidies.

"The Wilfs' entire focus is the new stadium," said sports economist Marc Ganis, president of his Chicago-based SportsCorp consulting firm. "When you're trying to market personal-seat licenses and club seats, you don't want to be in a position scrambling to sell the last 4,000 seats to an existing game.

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It sends the wrong signal."

The Raiders, Dolphins and Buccaneers, who have struggled to avoid blackouts in their home markets, opted for the league's minimum 85-percent threshold.

"We could have gone down to 85 percent, but we didn't feel the need to go that far," said Steve LaCroix, the Vikings' vice president of sales and chief marketing officer.

"Having games on TV locally doesn't benefit us financially. It's more of what is in the best interest of the fan base that drove the decision. We feel really confident the 90 percent threshold puts us in a much better position."

In May, NFL owners relaxed a policy that for almost 40 years had required teams to sell out games three days before kickoff to ensure local broadcasts. Teams were allowed to set their own thresholds under the old policy but were prohibited from selling those additional seats. Now it will cost them in a new revenue-sharing metric.

The Vikings are bound by the 90 percent threshold throughout the season. They have to share 50 percent of additional ticket sales with visiting teams compared with the 66-34 advantage of home teams who maintain their ticket manifest.

Ganis characterized the financial haircut the Vikings will take in ticket revenue as a down payment on a sales campaign for their new stadium.

"To them, it is worth it because they know the team has not preformed as they want it to on field and the focus should be on commercializing the new stadium, not selling those last few thousand tickets to a couple of games at the Metrodome," the sports economist said.

LaCroix said the team is working to elevate its season-ticket base to 50,000, which would leave about 7,000 single-game seats to sell to avoid a blackout.

On its face, Minnesota's 2012 home schedule appears salvageable, with NFC North rivals and top draws Detroit, Chicago and Green Bay traveling to Minneapolis for the final three games.

However, after the regular season opener against Jacksonville and a Week 3 visit by the San Francisco 49ers, there is Tennessee, Arizona and Tampa Bay, teams that combined to finish 21-27 last season.

Tickets remain for the Jaguars game although LaCroix said he expects the Metrodome to be full because fans attending the season finale against the Packers were required to buy tickets for Jacksonville.

The Vikings play host to the Buccaneers on a Thursday night (Oct. 25) only four days after playing the Cardinals, which means the team must sell 90 percent of its tickets by Monday evening to avoid a blackout.

"Thursday night, we'll be on national TV, which helps the energy in the building," LaCroix said. "Matt Blair will be inducted into the Ring of Honor. It will be a great night for us on the national stage so all those things are very positive."

The 72-hour rule debuted in 1973 when Congress passed a law lifting unilateral blackouts, which teams enforced within 75 miles of their markets for more than 20 years to drive ticket sales at stadiums.

Last month, Rep. Brian Higgins of New York and Sens. Sherrod Campbell Brown of Ohio and Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal, all Democrats, wrote NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to urge the league to drop the 50-50 revenue-sharing split.

And earlier this year, the Sports Fans Coalition, which is funded in part by communications giants Verizon and Time Warner Cable, petitioned the FCC to abolish NFL blackouts, claiming the league's policy is archaic and counterproductive because it punishes fans and forces teams to pay for trying to keep more games on the air.

Buffalo, Indianapolis and San Diego said they were unwilling to pay the premium to lower the sellout threshold.

"If the NFL is willing to concede it doesn't need 100 percent capacity in every stadium, why is the government still enforcing blackouts?" asked Brian Frederick, Sports Fans Coalition executive director.

Blackouts decreased from 50 percent after the law passed in the 1970s to 40 percent in the 1980s, 31 percent in the 1990s and 8 percent in the 2000s, according to the NFL. In 2011, only 16 of 256 games (6 percent) were blacked out.

"These numbers show that the league's decades-long commitment to promoting each week of the NFL as an event that attracts wide fan support is working, both for fans in the stadium and fans watching on television," the NFL told the FCC in a filing. "The current system is working and should not be altered."